


And I tried to wash you away but you just won't leave

by scalira



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Assassin AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:25:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalira/pseuds/scalira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malia was raised to kill. Ever since she remembered, she had learned that everyone could be a target. She grew up with knives in her hands instead of dolls, martial arts instead of ballet, swear words instead of lullabies. Everyone could be a target, and everyone could be the enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I tried to wash you away but you just won't leave

Malia watches as the water at her feet first turns pink, then red.

She leans against the cold stone of her shower, trying to wash the memory of what she did away with the blood.

His blood.

She stands there for at least an hour, letting the hot water beat down on her bruised body. Then she stumbles out of the shower, wraps a towel around herself and collapses onto the couch.

Malia grabs her phone and quickly types a message: “Target eliminated.”

Within ten seconds, she gets a text back: “Good job. See you back here.”

Malia sighs and breaks the cheap phone in half, knowing she’s screwed if someone traces her or her texts down. Then she turns on the TV, looking for something to keep her mind off the things she did. But she can’t run from it, not even while watching some mindless comedy.

* * *

 

 Malia was raised to kill.

 

Ever since she remembered, she had learned that everyone could be a target.

 

She grew up with knives in her hands instead of dolls, martial arts instead of ballet, swear words instead of lullabies.

 

Everyone could be a target, and everyone could be the enemy.

 

When she was little, she was taught not to trust, not to talk, not to believe anyone. She was taught that she was all alone in this world and if she wanted to survive, she had to know what it felt like to be dying.

 

When she was six, her mom taught her how to slit a thoat.

 

When she was eight, her mom taught her how to shoot.

 

When she was ten, her mom taught her how to stab.

 

And when she turned twelve, her mom put her in the car, blindfolded her and took her somewhere far away, deep down into the woods. She dropped her there, only gave her one waterbottle to survive.

 

Malia nearly died out there.

 

But she pulled through it, she toughened up, she survived. When she found her way back home there was no celebration. There was no cake, no presents, no pat on the shoulder or ‘congratulations’.

 

Her mom just handed her a small backpack. In it were a gun, two sharp knives and a fake ID.

 

“This is yours now,” she said.

 

And when she turned fifteen, her mom taught her the most important lesson of all: the art of seducing. The only lethal weapon she would always have was her own body.

 

“Men are weak,” her mom would say as she looked at Malia in the mirror.

 

"They only need some exposed skin or a whisper or red lips. And if you have them right where you want them…”

 

“You end them,” Malia finished, watching as her mom applied dark lipstick.

 

Her mom taught her how to smother with her thighs, how to paralyze with her fingers, how to see a potential weapon in everything around her in case she couldn’t bring her own. A book on a bedside table was a great blunt object to bash someone’s head in if given enough speed, bedsheets were great for strangling, toothbrushes could be jammed into someone’s throat with enough force.

 

On her seventeenth birthday, her mom threw a picture on the dinner table. Malia looked up from her bowl of cereal to inspect the next target.

 

The boy in the picture couldn’t be much older than she was. He had messy, brown hair and dark eyes with equally dark circles underneath them.

 

“Name?” She demanded.

 

“Stiles Stilinski. Seventeen, lives in Beacon Hills, California.”

 

“What’d he do?”

 

“Possessed by a dark Japanese spirit,” her mom replied like it was the most normal thing in the world.

 

Well, for them, it kinda was. They often had to deal with supernaturals misbehaving - it was their job to shut them down before the people started suspecting something.

 

“How do I kill a Nogitsune? I thought that was impossible.”

 

“My source told me he’s being brought to Eichen as we speak after being poisoned by some kind of herb the Nogitsune can’t stomach or something. Anyway, the point is that the Nogitsune is slumbering for now, but he’ll be back and it’s vital to kill the host before the spirit gains his strength again. Once the boy is dead, the Nogitsune will be a lot weaker and easier to catch.”

 

Malia nods and stands.

 

“Who gave you the assignment?”

 

“I don’t know, some rich old man. Gerard Argent, I believe.”

 

“How much did he offer?”

 

“Twenty thousand.”

 

Malia whistles impressed.

 

“Nice. I’m on it.”

 

* * *

Malia liked consistency. Her job may not be the most normal one, but it was predictable.

Get a target, find the target, kill the target, get money.

Easy. Simple. Predictable. Not in a million years she could’ve seen this coming.

Malia didn’t do love. She didn’t fall in love, she didn’t see the point of love, she didn’t believe in love.

But Stiles did something nobody had ever done before: he cared about her. He asked how she was doing, if she needed something, if she wanted to talk. He held her hands and kissed her like she was about to break, touched her like she was made out of porcelain instead of steel.

And when he introduced her to his friends, she felt accepted for the first time in her life.

She talked to Kira about stuff she had never talked about: clothes and math and boys and sex.

She went shopping with Lydia, went running with Scott.

She grieved with them over Allison, even though she hadn’t known her.

Sometimes she would lie awake at night, thinking about her job.

Her job was to kill the target, eliminate the threat. Her job was to protect innocent bystanders before they got killed, and now Allison was dead and her blood was on Stiles’ hands.

They didn’t talk about it, but everyone knew it was true.

Allison was dead because of him.

And it was her job to kill him for it.

She hadn’t heard from her mother yet, but she knew that wouldn’t be like that much longer. Sooner or later, her mother would find out an innocent person had died because of Stiles, and sooner or later she would come.

And it wouldn’t be pretty.

But for now, she allowed herself to enjoy feeling alive.

Before Stiles and his friends, she had thought living equaled not dying.

Living was getting money, buying food, training for a constant war that could never be won.

But now she knew she had been wrong.

Living wasn’t just not dying.

Living was having movie nights, it was daring Kira to strip down naked and run around the McCall residence in the middle of the night, it was star gazing with Stiles, it was getting drunk on cheap beer and dancing to cheesy pop songs, it was early morning runs with Scott.

And she was happy.

She managed to live that beautiful lie for three months.

Three months of living in the real world, learning about things other than than how to kill.

But then the inevitable happened.

And it was so much worse than she had imagined.

It started with texts from a blocked number.

Everyday, the unknown number would send her a name: Scott McCall, Kira Yukimura, Liam Dunbar, Lydia Martin.

After four days, a new text appeared: “Those are the new targets if you don’t eliminate the original threat.”

All her friends. Her mom would come for all of them if she didn’t kill Stiles.

_Sacrifice a few to save the many._

She loved him. Just thinking about killing him made her sick. But she also loved her friends.

_Sacrifice a few to save the many._

If she chose Stiles, if she chose love, she would have the blood of four innocent people on her hands.

_Sacrifice a few to save the many._

Malia was a lot of things. She was a killer, a liar, manipulative, a little fucked up. But she wasn’t selfish. She couldn’t choose Stiles over four innocent lives.

_Sacrifice a few to save the many._

Malia didn’t cry. Her mom had always taught her crying was a sign of weakness, and she couldn’t be weak. But that night, as she came to a decision, she cried as if her body had to catch up on all those wasted years of dry eyes.

_Sacrifice a few to save the many_

* * *

It hadn’t been her plan to make things bloody.

She had invited Stiles to go on a mini roadtrip, nothing too far or expensive. Just them, the Jeep and small motels were nobody would come looking for them.

She had wanted to smother him with a pillow when he was sleeping. Quick, mostly painless and easy to clean up.

But when she put the pillow on his face, he started fighting back. And with every second of him squirming and yelling and hitting it became more difficult for her to finish the job.

Tears stung in her eyes, her arms began to shake. But she couldn’t stop, not now, not anymore. So she grabbed one of the knives her mother had given her all those years ago and stabbed him in the throat.

The blood had sprayed everywhere: on the sheets, the walls, her clothes, her face. He had died a slow death, staring into her eyes as the life drained out of him.

Malia didn’t cry.

He was just another target.

She told herself her love died with him.

* * *

Malia doesn’t dare glance at the bed as she gets dressed.

She knows she’ll get away with this. The person behind the counter inside didn’t see her; they only saw Stiles when he asked for a room. The motel is too old to have security cameras. By the time someone finds Stiles, she’ll already be gone.

When she’s dressed, she plops down on the couch again and stares at her hands. The blood is gone, but she knows she’ll never get rid of him. She’ll carry him for the rest of her life.

She can’t run from it.

But she can run from her mom. And that’s exactly what she’s gonna do.

She’s never going back to her, to living that equals not dying. Never again will her mother take someone she loves away from her. She can never return to Beacon Hills, but maybe she can meet others. Maybe she can go to college, get a degree. The money she earned by killing Stiles will be on her bank account, that’s how they agreed it: she who kills the target, gets the money. She can build a life. Be someone else, learn how to be someone else, someone better. And maybe, one day, she’ll know how to love again.

Malia grabs her bag and walks out of the room, looking back one more time. She doesn’t know why she does it. Maybe she thinks she deserves it, maybe she punishes herself. Stiles’ lifeless eyes seem to follow her out of the room, seem to blame her. Those eyes will forever keep haunting her.

She closes the door behind her, takes a deep breath and disappears into the night.


End file.
